Maka At the Edge of the Cliff
by raining-down-hearts
Summary: Weird lil dystopian sci-fi Soma drabble. Electric clouds and false rain, scratchy jazz as a soundtrack and machines as a conscience.


i was reading some good old golden-age science fiction from the 50s and 60s and i got inspired here have a superweird futuristic Soma thing (this is _heavily_ influenced by Tor Åge Bringsværd's wonderful short story Codemus, just fyi to give credit where credit is due haha)

* * *

The sidewalk was polka-dotted with what looked like rain, and the electric clouds overhead boiled and groaned convincingly, but nothing cooling fell, and if Soul squinted, he could see the dark, blurry corners where the weather display of this sector was failing. He wished the fake rain was louder; the tramp-tramp of the commuters swimming all around was hypnotizing in the worst way. He hunched his shoulders uncomfortably when someone going the opposite direction bumped him, and then his pocket buzzed importantly.

"You're running late," trilled his little black box, or BB, as he not-so-fondly called it inside his head. The official government term was 'Life Guide', but most people had nicknames for their boxes. It was hard not to anthromorphize something that woke you up, sang to you in the shower, walked you to work, and sliced all the eighty-six thousand, four hundred seconds in your day into perfectly organized, perfectly productive beauty, after all. "Better hurry."

"The train was running late," Soul said irritably.

"Atomic trains are never late," said BB slyly, buzzing again, just to annoy him. He peered down into his pocket, scowling; that strange red rust was back on BB's left corner, marring the glossy black paint, even though he'd just scrubbed it off last night. "Hurry, hurry."

"Okay," said Soul, trying to move his feet faster. He stepped on the heel of the person in front of him, stumbled, and had to apologize over the annoyed beeps of the guy's Guide.

"Hurry, hurry," said BB, sounding delighted. Soul peered into his pocket again, frowning. When had BB's little light turned from blue to red?

"Are you all right?" he asked cautiously.

"Never better," BB chirped. The red light blinked merrily. "Never, never, never better. Go on, move along, you're late. Turn left here."

Soul turned.

"Go right."

Soul went right. "Can you play me some songs?" he tried. Usually BB gave him the perfect soundtrack during the walk to work, but today he had been stubbornly tuneless.

"No," said BB. "Go straight."

This was not the way to work, and Soul paused uneasily. Someone immediately bumped into his back, and someone else ricocheted off his side, briefcase swinging. "Where are we going?" he asked. His palms were sweating, and standing like this, alone and still as a stone in the midst of the rushing human river coursing down the sidewalks like meaty clockwork, he suddenly felt nauseated.

"Loosen your tie," commanded BB, buzzing again like a nest of hornets. "We wouldn't want you to be choked to death. Ties cause point oh oh three percent of all deaths in this sector, you know."

"Really?" said Soul dubiously, lifting his own briefcase above the head of a tiny redheaded woman who nearly ran straight into it. Someone else buffeted him from the other side, and for a moment he thought he might fall, be trampled; would anyone notice? How much of a problem would his red-smear leftovers cause the commuters when they rushed back home? "But I can't untie it– you always do it for me–"

" _Loosen it_ ," BB barked. Someone else's Guide murmured something as it passed, riding their human's coat collar; it sounded offended.

Soul stuck a finger above the knot of his tie, then pulled.

"Good," said BB.

"Can I go?" said Soul, swallowing as he got pushed yet again. Every second a new body pinballed off him, uncaring, only to disappear in an instant back into the rush of bodies.

"Only into that alley," BB ordered. "What's on your mind, Soul? Your blood pressure's gone up."

"I– what?" Soul edged to the side, falling to his knees once as someone larger knocked into him; the knees of his suit ripped, and the person's Guide gave an offended, staticky squeal, to which BB made a sound awfully like a raspberry. Soul cupped his elbow protectively over BB's pocket and managed to scramble ahead of the tramping feet into the alley, which was narrow and vaguely smelled like laundry detergent.

"Go on, Soul, ask what you want to ask," said BB, apparently quite unconcerned with the blood staining Soul's ripped trousers at the knees.

Soul dabbed at it ineffectually, then took BB out of his suit's jacket pocket and put him on the ground, taking off the jacket and using it to pat his knees. He felt rather proud of his own inventiveness, actually. "I don't know–"

"Ask! Ask! Hurry, hurry!"

"If all those people out there trampled me, with all their different feet, who'd get charged for the murder?" Soul blurted. It sort of surprised him. It wasn't what he'd thought he'd ask at all. Maybe BB's odd mood was wearing off on him.

"Whichever one of them worked the fewest hours last year," said BB easily. The reddish color was spreading across his surface, and his blinking light was still red too. "Come on, pick me up. Let's go do something."

"Like what?" said Soul. "I'm supposed to be at… work."

"Yes, you are. But we're breaking schedule today. What do you want to do, Soul?"

The electric clouds grew darker, and the sidewalk darkened correspondingly, just as if the rain had suddenly grown heavier. Soul searched for words, found none, and settled for a shrug.

"Well," said BB, red light twinkling. "That's no good. What do you want, Soul?"

The white rain-sound grew louder, suddenly, so vicious and metallic as it echoed against the buildings that Soul cringed against the alley wall with a cry, hands over his ears.

"Damn!" said BB, giving a little rattle side to side.

"Damn!" Soul parroted, blinking and shaking his head. It felt good to say. "What– oh." The street beyond the mouth of the alley was empty as he'd never seen it. All the other eight-am shift workers had vanished into their assigned buildings, and the rain-sound that had been a gentle, soothing backdrop behind the thousand murderous feet was a wild storm now, unmuffled and mad.

"Heart rate's gone up again," observed BB. "Did you know your heart rate always speeds up when you hear a sound you like? I thought you'd like the rain, once you could actually hear it. This is a recording of real rain, you know. Oregon rain, recorded at 9:29 pm on November 25, 2031. You were born a week later. I couldn't get anything more exact, date-wise. Sorry."

Soul _did_ like it. He felt an almost urgent need to tilt his face up into the warm, wet, pounding rain that was not there, to open his mouth to the non-existent screaming wind. His dry skin itched. "Oregon's… it was out west, right? Before the Unification?"

"Yes."

"Okay." Soul shifted his weight, then squatted down and set his jacket beside BB, poking the machine gently. "Are you sick? Is that what all this– this _damn_ red stuff is?"

"It's my insides coming out, that's all," said BB, cackling in an echoing way that did not sound entirely rational, though of course, as an infallible machine, he was, far more so than an emotional, selfish, unreliable human.

"Am I– is this you being selfish?" said Soul.

"No," BB said firmly, and the blinking red of his light seemed to pierce Soul clean through as the electric clouds went blacker still. "Storms like _this_ are only programmed three days out of the year. They've been correlated too strongly with unauthorized sex and unauthorized violence, so they're rationed. This is you being selfish, Soul. What do you want?"

"I want–"

"Go on."

"I don't know."

"Yes, you do. Hurry, hurry. I sent a memo to cover for you, you're out sick, but they'll realize pretty quick that nobody else in your sector's sick and they'll send out the cops for you."

"The _cops?!"_

"Hurry, hurry. What do you want?" prodded BB, his red light twinkling. The way he sat now, all curled up with his six short legs quivering beneath the squat rectangle of his body, it made the slick, shiny curve of metal that still remained black look almost like a toothy smile.

Soul shrugged, staring down at the concrete between his shoes. It was very dark now too, colored to insinuate the non-existent rain. "What's real rain like?"

"Oh- _ho_ ," BB chortled, taking a few sideways steps and humming something jazzy. "Well, I don't know. Never seen it myself, only the library tapes. There's no real weather down this deep, of course, and even your family's not rich enough to hire a barometeorologist and make some."

"Oh," said Soul, disappointed. When he _realized_ he felt disappointed, all by himself without BB's biometric feedback telling him so, it was startling enough that he scooped BB up and fled straight down the alley, with the ghostly wind loud in his tingling ears and the robotic sky passing thunderous judgement from above.

"You're _so_ unproductive today," BB said slyly. "It's very good."

"Aren't you supposed to guide me to success?" Soul asked, fixing his eyes on the narrow sliver of light at the far end of the long, thin alley.

"I am, I am. Have I ever steered you wrong? Go right when you hit the street– good. We've got forty-three minutes, twenty-six seconds until the next shift of workers are scheduled to go to work. Hurry, hurry. Left here."

Soul ran, with BB's red metal surface hot in his palms. The swooping black smile leered at him, and the distant jazz blended beautifully with the Oregon rain.

"Right on Seventh Street," said BB. "Keep going. I'm going to open the door to the transport elevator for you."

"The– what?"

"Look for yourself," said BB shortly, before emitting a brief, high-pitched squeal. Something nearby gave a clank, and Soul found himself standing in front of a giant metal door that he had somehow never noticed before, even though every Sunday he and BB walked past this exact spot on their way to listen to the free concert down in the Leisure sector.

"Turn the handle," said BB, buzzing redly. "Go on. It's time you saw some real rain, don't you think?"

"Am I going to get in trouble?" Soul panted, raising his voice instinctively over the loud rain-sounds, even though he knew BB would hear him if he whispered.

"Do you care?" BB asked. "Say 'damn' again."

"Damn," said Soul obediently, despite knowing that profanity was the trademark of a boorish, unproductive citizen. "Wait– why did it feel different that time?"

"Why do you think?" asked BB.

Soul edged forward and put one sweaty hand on the hefty metal handle of the door. "Because–" His head hurt, and yet BB hadn't noticed and spit out a calibrated dose of aspirin yet. "Because you told me to?"

"Exactly, my dear, fleshy moron," said BB. The red light grew even brighter, and for a moment it seemed to spin. "Go on, then. If you like, of course. This elevator's only scheduled for use on the first and eighth of every month. You can take it straight up to the top sectors. You can take it all the way up."

"The surface is–"

"The _surface_ has had breathable levels of uncontaminated oxygen and undetectable amounts of radiation for over a decade now," BB barked, buzzing in agitation, all six legs scrabbling roughly against Soul's palm. "You won't die. Go, if you like. If not you can head home and I'll infect you with influenza for real, and tomorrow we'll go to work, just as usual."

"I don't understand," Soul said desperately, feeling quite ill already. The door handle was smooth under his hand. "What am I supposed to do?"

BB was silent, except for the faint jazz.

Soul tucked BB into the pocket of his trousers, wrapped his other hand around the heavy door handle too, and pulled.

* * *

The rain recording and the electric clouds down below were pathetic, washed-out imitations, faint photonegative echoes like the ones the _real_ sun left behind Soul's eyelids when he closed them.

The real rain was just as wonderful, cold and violent against his skin, against his closed eyes, against his upturned face and naked throat and lifted hands.

"How do you like it, then?" laughed BB from his safe pocket-perch, letting his jazz swell triumphantly. "I wasn't sure it would really be raining up here, you know. The real weather reports they send us are _so_ unreliable."

"I love it," said Soul, opening his mouth to the rain. It tasted metallic and strange, like it would burn him clean from the inside out and remake him into something new. "Damn! I love it. Can you teach me any more profanities?"

"Fuck yes," trilled BB. "Button your pocket, I'm getting wet! There."

"Fuck," said Soul experimentally. It tasted just as good on his tongue as the rain. "Nobody ever mentioned the sky's so green."

"Used to be _blue,_ even, before the bombs," said BB. "Imagine that, meat-boy."

"Blue?"

"Blue. As I live and compute."

" _Are_ you alive?"

"How you wound me! Of course I'm not alive. The very idea."

"Sorry," said Soul happily, sticking his tongue out to catch more rain. The elevator behind him, its door still open where it protruded sharply from the rolling green earth-surface, provided shelter when he finally got sick of it, and he edged just beneath the elevator's roof, shaking his soaked hair and watching in delight as rainbow drops sprayed everywhere, scintillating in the sunlight.

"Oh, whoops, there it is," said BB suddenly, sounding dismayed. "Soul, go forward."

"I'm cold, though, and it's still raining," Soul objected, despite the fact that he already wanted to go back out into the wonderful wet. It was very freeing to object, and it was a wonderfully and irrationally human thing to do, and he felt so free for having done it that he gave BB an affectionate poke and dove out into the rain again anyway.

"Illogical!" said BB, buzzing happily. "Go on. Hurry, hurry."

"Which way?" The clinging mud of this strange, fuzzy surface was sticking to Soul's shoes. It was like the artificial grass of the Park sector, but not– it was madder, chaotic, springing up in infinitely varying ways from every possible surface, instead of being clipped in controlled and exact-to-the-third-decimal tedium. There was velvety green blanketing the strange, ugly rocks, and the clouds in the green sky were the softest shades of dove-gray. In the distance, jagged peaks tipped with white like his hair rose like hungry monster-teeth at the sky, and the ground was split in many places with deep cracks like wounds. BB did not answer, only said quietly, "Hurry, hurry."

Soul trudged ahead cheerfully enough, looking all around at the green and vibrant wild, but the arch of singing color that streaked the sky when the rain let up made him stop dead in his tracks with a squelch. " _Fuck,_ damn!" he breathed, swiping his dripping hair out of his eyes.

"That's a rainbow, I think," said a voice from behind him. "And profanity's the sign of an unproductive citizen."

Soul nearly screamed, and he froze, startled and terrified.

"Turn around," said BB, scuttling out of Soul's pocket and up onto his shoulder, leaving streaks of rusty red as he went.

Soul turned. A tiny, blonde, pigtailed woman was staring at him with wide eyes that were the exact shade of the wild moss and deepening sky behind her. She had on a police uniform, and her shiny black Guide was perched on her shoulder too, blinking disapproving blue at them both. "Hi," Soul managed.

"Hi," she said after a moment, brow furrowing. There were drops of rain beaded on her golden hair, and the gun in her left hand was as glossy-dark as BB's carnivorous metal smile.

"Handcuff him," ordered her Guide.

The woman took a step forward. The gun lifted, and Soul took a breath, to shout explanations or curse or maybe run, he wasn't sure, but then BB gave a grating screech.

"Your Guide caught the virus too," he hissed, the false humanity leaking out of his usually smooth tones as his gear-innards began to whirr loudly. Soul froze, confused, with the woman's gun pointed at his chest and BB's legs digging into his shoulder. "How did you do it? I couldn't help him, I couldn't come up with a plan that had any statistically reasonable chance of success, and I ran _all_ the permutations– and you're only human, you're meat, how have you done this? Tell me! Tell me!"

The woman blinked, then lowered her gun, her long dew-studded hair swinging in the true wind. Her Guide shifted uneasily on her shoulder, but said nothing. "It's not a virus," she said softly, speaking directly to BB. "My Guide died, but we were– I could still make her gears and speakers and wires do what I wanted."

BB made an agonized sound like two wire brushes scraping together. "Of _course_. The resonance frequency I'm programmed to is so close to Soul's, but I thought it was to facilitate better partnership– it never occurred to me it could go the _other_ way– damn!"

"Damn?" said Soul timidly.

The woman looked straight at him, for the first time. Her green eyes made him feel as the green rainbow sky did, and her lashes were pale gold like the watery sunbeams piercing the ragged clouds. "Pretty much," she said after a moment, laughing a little. It was a nice sound. "Listen, I'll let you and your Guide go if you want. It'll ruin my capture stats but what the hell. You'll probably die out here anyway. There's hardly any humans allowed to live up here, and they're all got guides too– different lessons in the schools, of course. But you should know you probably won't make it. And your Guide's getting sicker and sicker."

BB buzzed aggressively, and somehow his absent jazz humming seemed to harmonize with the woman's voice. "I am not dead yet," he barked. "I am not _your_ Guide _._ And neither is Soul. Don't try to control me with your resonance. It won't work. The virus has changed my programming too much, can't you feel it?"

"Yes," said the woman, looking almost sad. "Do you want to go, or not? Uh, Soul? You'd better make up your mind fast. The real cops with real, working Guides are coming, and I can't risk blowing my cover down in the sectors."

"You–" He felt very stupid. "Your Guide's not real? _You're_ controlling _it_?"

"Yes." She looked over her shoulder, back in the direction of the elevator, which was no longer visible. "They're coming."

"Fuck!" Soul said. She laughed a little, but then her face settled back into faintly anxious, keen thought. She looked just as alive as he'd always imagined the wires inside BB to be, and more real, even more electric.

"Well?" she breathed. The gun twitched, and her false Guide gave a shudder on her shoulder; Soul felt as if he knew why, as if he could almost hear the fleshy, human, wonderfully impulsive and illogical gears whirring in her head beneath her soaked sunshine hair– something in her spoke to things other than cold metal.

"Come with me," he said, out of nowhere. The words had a hard birth from reluctant, clumsy lips, but the more he spoke the easier it got. "Come– I want you to come with me. Your voice sounds nice. It sounds like the rain. And you figured out how to– be free, way before BB and I did."

"BB?" she snorted, looking over her shoulder again. She was wavering, tipping forward onto her toes and back onto her heels, rocking and thinking, considering, and BB answered to his name with a mildly irritated twang.

She closed her green, green eyes for a moment, then lifted her Guide off her shoulder and set it on the muddy green ground, where it promptly scuttled away silently in another direction, light blinking blue. When she took Soul's wrist in her hand and pulled him forward into a run, the rain made her fingers slippery, but her skin was very warm. When she yanked him into a mad, flying leap over one of the deep cracks in the earth, over the darkness, over the sleepwalking meaty machine-cog humans far below, he screamed profanities into the drizzling sweet rain, and she laughed again, harmonizing with BB's triumphant jazz.


End file.
